Review of The One I Love (2014) by Mike M — 09 Sep 2014

Apart from seriously lackluster box office revenues, the major trend sweeping through Hollywood this year is the overhaul of the romantic comedy, as evidenced by the recent releases of the unapologetic Obvious Child, the satirical They Came Together, and the tell-it-like-it-is What If. Recognizing an underserved niche in the movie-marketplace, independent studios and distributors are churning out low-budget, high-brow rom-coms that blur genre-lines and tackle unchartered subject matter (see Brooks Barnes' August 5th article in the New York Times). The latest addition to this script-flipping canon comes from producers Jay and Mark Duplass, writer Justin Lader and director Charlie McDowell.

The One I Love is a premise-driven examination of one couple's relationship on the verge of falling apart. The film opens with Ethan and Sophie (Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss) struggling through couples therapy with their marriage counselor (Ted Danson). Clearly at a communication impasse and still unable to overcome Ethan's long-past infidelity, the therapist recommends a weekend getaway in the country, and he knows just the place. Willing to try anything to recreate the love they once had, Ethan and Sophie find themselves spending the night at a quaint, orchard-covered country-style home complete with a pool and a guest house (spoilers ahead). Before long, the couple realizes that this is no ordinary home: they soon discover that whenever one of them enters the guest house alone, they are greeted by an exact replica of their partner. While in the guest house, Ethan and Sophie can converse, interact, and yes, sleep with what appears to be clones of one another. After overcoming their initial reservations about how utterly bizarre the scenario is, Ethan and Sophie establish some ground rules and decide to embrace the phenomenon and use their time in the guest house as therapy. Over time Sophie begins to grow quite fond of the Ethan that she spends time with in the guest house, and the real Ethan becomes nervous. Sophie gradually divulges-implicitly, though not always-that the Ethan in the guest house is essentially a more clever, emotionally-involved version of real-world Ethan. He's funny and always knows the right things to say. He's accessible and willing to work through problems with Sophie. They talk about the time he cheated, and are able to come to a resolution. Even his hair is "beachier," and he doesn't wear glasses. As Sophie and real-world Ethan grow apart, jealousies lead to betrayals and just as the audience starts wondering where this story is going, the film makes a delightfully unexpected pivot into its third act, which I won't reveal here.

Aesthetically, The One I Love has a few impressive attributes. Duplass and Moss are very entertaining together and carry the entire film by playing the two versions of their characters for over 90 minutes alone on screen. With the help of some subtle hair and makeup work, they both adeptly portray their parallel selves as eerily, unsettlingly different. It was nice seeing Moss do more film work, as she has a perplexing quality of being weak-in-the-knees charming at one moment and scarily forthright the next. Duplass delivers on most of the key scenes, but also channels his comedy background (querying "What plan does he even have?" after learning bizarro-Ethan has a cell phone got a lot of laughs). The orange and gold hews of the film are beautiful, as if entirely shot at twilight, and the music is typically meant to make the viewer uncomfortable.

Thematically the film broaches some interesting questions about love and relationships, playing largely off the concept that your worst enemy in a relationship can often be yourself. It could be that you've grown or changed and the other person is still stuck on some older version of you that they prefer, or it could be that they've idealized you into something you're not, but rather something that they want you to be. The Ethan that Sophie sees in the guest house is in many ways the best Ethan she could imagine, and the real Ethan pales in comparison. The film dramatizes the intriguing question: what if you could get exactly what you want? Interestingly, where Sophie is enthralled with guest house Ethan, the real Ethan has no feelings for the Sophie he sees in the guest house, because he knows that she's not the same Sophie he fell in love with and married. The dichotomy of Ethan's love as self-evident and Sophie's as circumstantial-and Sophie's apparent acceptance of this fact-is a fascinating opinion on the nature of love.

Similarly, it's true that people tend to glorify the past, often at the expense of moving forward. In Ethan and Sophie's case at the beginning of the film, they've lost the spark and will try anything to get it back, even reenacting their spontaneous first date. They each harp about growing together, looking to the future, and having new experiences, yet their penchant for nostalgia prevents them from doing any of this. It's not uncommon for people to have a couple good years together then spend three times as long fighting an uphill battle, trying to get back to where they once were. By trying to revive their relationship through re-creation, Ethan and Sophie drive each other apart.

The film overall is a fun, uneasy experience that took some courage for the filmmakers to produce and the small cast to take part in. However, towards the end of the film the "magic" of the situation plays too large a role and the audience finds itself having to trust the filmmakers vision, but the payoff is slightly less than satisfactory. By its conclusion, the highly compelling thematic overtures mentioned above are still top-of-mind for the viewer, but a lack of clarity in the climax holds it back as a body of work. Nevertheless, The One I Love is still a noteworthy constituent in the growing stable of rom-coms designed for the modern age.